


Best Laid Plans

by pickleplum



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickleplum/pseuds/pickleplum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann has more than one reason for being upset with Pentecost for the man's deal with Hannibal Chau, some personal, some are just business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Full lines of dialogue in italics indicate conversations in Cantonese.

“Now, this guy. This is Hannibal Chau,” Pentecost says. “He runs the kaiju black market here in Asia. When funding ran out, I turned to him for help and gave him exclusive rights to all kaiju remains in the region.”

The words are out before Hermann can stop them. _”You_ did that?”

If only Pentecost had realized the other source of his Resistance’s anonymous funding, he may have struck a different bargain. Then again, if he had figured matters out, Hermann would be very disappointed with himself. Well, the deal certainly explains the explosive growth of Hannibal Chau’s business over the last six months and the difficulty of expanding into new markets despite the booming supply. Pentecost, of all people, had granted him a monopoly.

Now the Marshal wants to send Newton into that snake’s pit? Right after the infuriating little man nearly killed himself by hooking his brain to that of a monster? To try it again? Hermann thanks his stubborn stars for his extreme self-control. Without it, he would surely be plotting the Marshal’s slow, painful demise more energetically.

More pragmatically, if Chau does have a secondary brain hidden away, maybe he and Newton can learn how to close the Breach before the double event. That is worth a bit of risk and Hermann knows very well how to manage risk. He is a numbers man, after all.

Hermann sighs. Of course, the safest solution is unworkable, the distance from the Sydney warehouse being too great for the item to arrive in time. He’ll have to let Newton visit Chau as Pentecost ordered. Thankfully, the groundwork is already in place for a number of other contingency plans.

He doesn’t have to send Newton out uninformed, however. Hermann gives a stern (and completely ignored) warning to be careful with his health and not to give anything beyond the barest of details to Chau, saying “He will eat you alive, Newton, then find a way to sell your bones. Don’t trust him, don’t tell him anything, and put distance between yourself and him as quickly as you can.”

“Yes, mom. I’ll be careful. Sheesh,” Newton says with irritation and an airy wave as he leaves the lab. Hermann would happily slap the man’s face off his head if he didn’t like it quite so much. He sighs instead.

As Newton scurries off into the Hong Kong night, Hermann places a call with a phone the PPDC most certainly does not know he possesses. He speaks in rapid Cantonese, his pronunciation stripped of any vestige of his usual crisp British accent. _“If you let any harm come to him, I swear your family will not find enough of you to occupy your space in the family shrine. Do you understand? Good.”_ That closing should provide her with proper motivation, he thinks.

From LOCCENT he sees Leatherback reduced largely to a charred husk, his damned secondary brain incinerated with the rest of his abdominal organs by _Gipsy Danger’s_ plasma cannon. Otachi fares slightly better, as far as dead kaiju go, hide burned by reentry from near orbit, bones undoubtedly shattered on impact, but both brains likely protected well enough for Newton’s purposes.

Hermann is relieved when Pentecost orders him to Newton’s side. He’ll be able to check his first contingency’s effectiveness and have a convenient opportunity to implement the next. Seeing Newton bruised and bleeding fills him with a rage he can barely contain. Chau will pay for this. Revenge will have to wait as there are more immediately pressing matters: namely, Newton’s second Drift.

The news of apparent failure of his predictive model provides additional obfuscation for his plan. The double rather than triple event is the perfect cover and he seizes it. “There’s only way to be sure and that is to do this … together. I’ll go with you,” he declares before doing exactly what he’d planned from the moment Pentecost had ordered Newt to Drift again.

He remembers the Drift advice dispensed at the Jaeger academy and, after his mind pulls itself back together, lets all of his and Newton’s combined memories roll through him. He needn’t worry about what Newton might see as he’ll certainly be hearing exactly what was revealed from the other man himself at the first opportunity. Connection broken and stomach emptied, it is time to rescue Operation Pitfall from failure and humanity from extinction.

They do.

As a victory celebration swallows the Shatterdome, then the city, and then the entire world, Hermann slips away to attend to some personal business. Locking himself in the abandoned office he used earlier, he calls the same Hong Kong number he contacted then. 

_”I am most disappointed in your performance tonight, young lady,”_ he snaps. _”You were supposed to protect him, not allow Chau to throw him into the streets during a kaiju attack!”_

_”How was I to know the kaiju would attack him directly? I thought he and Chau were talking crazy about Drifting with kaiju and the monsters targeting your little friend. If he were normal, he would have been safe in that shelter. You can’t blame me for his troubles!”_

_”But I do, Fang. I do,”_ Hermann replies with an icy tone. _“However, because he survived on his own blessed luck and because you are now in a position to take over Chau’s enterprise, I will allow you to continue your employment with me and retain your life.”_

_”About Chau, sir….”_

_”What **now**?”_

_”Chau’s alive.”_

_”You jest.”_

_”He limped back to the shop just before the Breach announcement chemical burned but very much alive.”_

_”Unbelievable. The man must have sold his soul.”_

_”He was also grumbling about finding your friend. Something about his shoe.”_

_”I see. Thank you, Fang. Continue your work and keep me informed. Don’t fail me again.”_

_”Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”_

He disconnects and returns the phone to the safe in the cabinet, then leans against the wall and pinches the bridge of his nose. After reciting the first twenty digits of pi to center himself, Hermann limps back to the party and finds Newton in the middle of the mess hall, regaling a group of techs with his adventures of the evening. He arrives just in time to hear the apparently exaggerated report of Hannibal Chau’s death.

Hermann pulls a look of surprise. “The fetal kaiju swallowed Chau?”

“Yeah! Right in front of me! I thought I was done for,” Newton exclaims. “Why do you look so smug?” He squints at Hermann and continues with unmistakable suspicion. “You’re fantasizing it got me, aren’t you?”

“Of course not!” He raps Newton sharply on the shin with his cane and smiles a little as the man yelps. “I’m savoring the image of Chau meeting a grisly and well-deserved end. It’s no more than the foul man deserved after what he tried to do to you.”

“Awww… That’s sweet. In a terrifying sort of way. I always thought you were just out for my blood, not people’s in general,” Newton teases.

“Chau was not ‘people in general’, Newton. He was a money-hungry charlatan who tried very deliberately to have my … best friend killed.”

“‘Best friend’, huh? Is that all? Or was that pause significant?” He smirks and raises a suggestive eyebrow. “Maybe we should talk it over. In private.”

With that, Hermann allows Newton to lead him away from the party and to bed. 

_That_ is not an outcome he planned for, but it’s also not an opportunity he can allow to pass him by.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a comment I saw float past on Tumblr about possible interpretations of Hermann’s _”You_ did that?” reaction.
> 
> In case it’s not clear, ‘Fang’ is Chau’s bald female henchman. I’ve seen that name used for her in a place or two, though now I can’t find those sources. 
> 
> I keep using ‘Newton’ because it seemed more appropriate for a story written pretty much from Hermann’s POV.
> 
> Music to set the mood: [The Twilight Singers, _Blackberry Belle,_ Track 10, “Fat City (Slight Return)”](http://youtu.be/ZTO17UQfdKE)


End file.
